The Gift We Need – Christmas Eve Sermon

Grace and peace to you and mercy from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Have you ever received a gift that wasn’t quite what you expected?

Maybe you found yourself unwrapping a present that seemed well-intentioned but left you scratching your head, thinking, “This isn’t exactly what I wanted.” That’s happened to me. When I moved into my own place a few years ago, my father gave me a homemade wooden tool box for Christmas. He’d made it with his own hands, undoubtedly a labor of love. Now, don’t get me wrong, I appreciated the craftsmanship, the effort, the sentiment. But if I’m honest, it wasn’t the gift I was looking for. In fact, it wasn’t a gift I necessarily “wanted.” Add to that this toolbox came with different tools, and it triggered suspicion in my mind. I thought, perhaps my father, with all good intentions, was dropping a subtle hint that I needed to become more of a handyman.

Newsflash: I’m not a handyman. I know my limits, and fixing things with a hammer or wrench is usually beyond them.

We often speak of God’s grace toward us in Jesus Christ, the atonement of our sins on the cross, as a gift. But that gift isn’t merely something that happens in Jerusalem at Easter. It’s something that begins even in Bethlehem on Christmas. The gift of God’s salvation begins giving, if you will, with the birth of Jesus, the Christ, the holy Son of God, our Lord. And it’s the gift that keeps giving, even in our own time, today, here and now. “To you is born this day a savior…”

But when we look at who Jesus is, when we really step back and look at what kind of gift we are getting, we can hardly say that it is the gift that we want. We, like the Jewish people of Jesus’ time, can look around our world and ask ourselves what all this can mean—war and talk of war, intrigue and accusations of scheming. And in our own, personal lives, now in our own time—strife and estrangement, doubts and uncertainty, disease and death. If only God would come down from heaven, then things would be different…

But God has come down from heaven. For us and for our salvation, Jesus Christ became incarnate of the Virgin Mary and was made man, true God from true God. But when we look at Jesus, we see a helpless child when we want a glorious king or general, a great prophet or a healer. We want God to send angel legions to undo the wrong in this world and bring in peace. Instead, we get a small child who will grow up and suffer like we do…and even die. Nails, spear
shall pierce him through. This isn’t the gift we want, but the gift we need.

We need this gift of Jesus Christ because it’s the gift that’s precisely the opposite of what this world is offering. This world promises success in might, and God comes to us as a helpless infant and even dies—and not just any death, but a violent, criminal’s death. Instead of crushing this world’s wrongs with power, God reveals to us just how backward the ways of popular wisdom are. God shows us a different way in Jesus Christ—the way of grace and truth, of humility and peace.

You know, that wooden toolbox has proven its worth countless times. It’s proven my salvation in unexpected moments, seen more action than I could’ve ever imagined. I’ve come to realize that what I initially thought wasn’t the gift I wanted turned out to be precisely the gift I needed. I’ve even added my own tools I’ve bought since getting the toolbox. Sometimes what we want conflicts with what we need. It’s a tension we all grapple with in various aspects of our lives, and it’s a tension that echoes through the message of Christmas.

Christmas often brings with it a list of desires—a wish for things that glitter and shine. We create mental wishlists, imagining the perfect gifts that would bring us joy. Yet, the heart of Christmas beckons us to unwrap a different kind of gift, one that might not align with our immediate wants but undeniably meets our deepest needs. Jesus, born of earthly parents in a teenage girl barely old enough to marry and a carpenter with work-worn hands, is that unexpected gift. He’s not the flashy present we’d put on a wishlist, not the strapping hero atop a winged stallion from the heavens we expect God to send. He doesn’t come adorned with ribbons and bows, or with cosmic armament, but his presence is a gift we need more than we realize.

Time and again we encounter craftsmanship that surpasses any earthly design in the ways God chooses to operate, and Christmas is yet again another time we are reminded of that. God, in his infinite wisdom, fashions a gift—a gift that transcends time and circumstance. Jesus is not just for the saints or scholars; he’s for ordinary people like us, like you, each with unique struggles and joys.

There is no question that our world needs to head in a different direction than the one we are currently going. We need God’s continual work in our lives to bring about that changes that we so long for. We need God himself in our lives, and that’s why Jesus came among us, God our Emanuel, God with us, one of us. He showed us what life lived the way God wants it looks like. He gave us a model of the godly life. He showed us how to do God’s work, and he empowers us to do that work ourselves. He shows us that we do that work in, with, and through love. God who is love chose to become one of us in Jesus, our Emanuel, God with us—love come down from heaven for our sake, to work in us the grace and mercy of God so that we too much live lives of grace and truth, of humility and peace, of love.

That is the work of Christmas, the work of Easter, done by God through us. God gives us the gift of relationship with him through Jesus Christ and enlivens that same relationship through the outpouring of power through the Holy Spirit. When we unwrap that gift, when we recognize that relationship as a promise fulfilled, how can we help but live our lives differently? How can we help but be instruments of God’s peace in the world and in the lives of our family and friends? The coming of God this Christmas, the incarnation of our Lord, happens anew in our own time, in our own lives, and in us. Through us, who hear the angel proclamation this night as we’ve heard it every other Christmas Eve, God brings about his promised “peace and goodwill among all people.” This is our gift from God, and our gift to share with the world.
We’ve received a great gift from God—it might not be the gift we want, but it is the gift we need. And it’s the gift the world needs. It’s the gift of salvation and reconciliation to God and to one another. Ours is the charge to share that gift with the world so desperately in need of compassion and mercy, humility and grace.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.